Xbox Gaming in South Africa

This year's Rage Expo played host to the first public appearance of the Xbox 360's motion-sensing device Kinect in South Africa, and XG was there to see what it was all about.

First off, let me just clear one thing up: Kinect actually works. Yes, contrary to the rantings of your local forum troll, Kinect isn't some elaborate smoke and mirrors marketing scam peddled by Microsoft employees the world over to steal your money (although, ultimately, that's what they want), in fact, Kinect does a great job at picking up players and their movements. However, while the hardware is certainly impressive, some of the games on show did highlight the need for more development time to smooth out one or two kinks before the final release.

My first Kinect experience was with Kinect Sports, Microsoft's answer to Nintendo's Wii Sports, with the ping pong (table tennis) mini-game. Starting the match is simple enough, with only a quick calibration screen to confirm which hand the player wants to use as the paddle. The game plays out as you'd expect, with players moving their hand in a forward motion to hit the ball, matching their forehand or backhand strokes with the on-screen action, and angling their hand to add spin. Playing a quick 'first to 11' match saw my Avatar responding accurately to my movements and position of my hand, with only a slight delay between my actions and the on-screen response. While the basics worked as expected, attempting to alter the ball's lateral direction proved fruitless. No matter how much I tried I couldn't hit the ball in the direction I intended, making for long - and rather boring - rallies where neither my opponent or I made a mistake due to the lack of difficulty. In fact, it's possible to just wave your hand at the right time to return the ball because your on-screen Avatar will adjust its position automatically depending on the ball's trajectory.

For the most part, the Kinect Sports' table tennis mini-game works really well, but the lack of control over the ball does need rectifying. It's still possible that Rare will add this missing element into the final version, and with a host of other sports on offer, including bowling, boxing, track and field, football and volleyball, as well as additional mini-games, Kinect Sports still holds the potential to offer an entertaining package to first time Kinect gamers.

Next up was Joy Ride, Big Park's free-to-play XBLA game turned Kinect racer. As expected from a casual racer, Joy Ride is filled with vibrant and colorful cartoonish environments and vehicles, with your Xbox Avatar acting as your on-screen representation. There's no acceleration or braking here (your car is basically in auto-drive), and it's just a matter of putting your hands out in front of you like you're holding a steering wheel and guiding your vehicle along the track. One thing that catches everyone by surprise, including myself, is just how sensitive Joy Ride's control system is. What you initially perceive as the basic movement required to take a corner normally, tends to translate into a sharp turn straight into a wall. The in-game sensitivity to your hand movements takes a fair amount of getting used to, but for the most part reacted consistently to my hand movements.

The mode on offer at Rage was a basic lap race, with a few collectibles, short-cuts and jumps scattered around the track to mix things up. In addition to the standard racing you can perform tricks by doing certain body movements while your vehicle is in the air, such as spinning around or leaning back to perform back flips. Body movements are also used for power boosts, which can be activated by bringing your hands towards your chest to build up power boost and then pushing forward to activate it.

Kinect Joy Ride is very much a basic kart racer, but it showed off more of Kinect's tracking abilities, and with enough variation in the modes on offer (and some tweaking to its sensitivity), it could prove to be an enjoyable racer.

While Lionhead's Milo Project retail release is still up in the air, Frontier Developments' Kinectimals offers up an intriguing alternative. A virtual animal pet game (think Nintendogs), Kinectimals allows players to interact with their utterly adorable pet which lives on a fantasy island. You can give your pet a name, teach it new tricks, and explore the island together, collecting and customizing as you go along. The AI worked remarkably well in the short Frisbee mini-game on show at Rage, and provided a small insight into the game's potential for interaction with your pet.

However, while the AI reacted almost naturally to your presence in front of Kinect, the Frisbee mini-game on offer was a little disappointing. Suffering from poor latency, the movement of throwing the Frisbee was visibly off when compared to the on-screen action, and made for a wishy-washy game of fetch.

While 1:1 tracking isn't critical to the success of this type of game, the mini-games detracted away from the potentially fantastic interaction that can be had directly with your pet. Hopefully the mini-games will receive some attention before the final release.

The last of the Microsoft published Kinect games on show was Kinect Adventures, which surprisingly was a lot of fun. The mini-game on offer was River Rush which sees you and another player guide a rubber dinghy down a raging river, collecting coins as you go along. Navigating the river involves players working as a team, leaning side to side to avoid obstacles, and jumping in unison to gain extra air on jumps. Again there was slight delay between my actions and the on-screen reaction, however, it never felt intrusive enough to be a concern.

Overall my impression from Kinect Adventures is that while it doesn't utilise Kinect in an unexpected or ground breaking way, it could well fit in as the perfect introduction to Kinect for gamers, with a wide variety of mini-games set to be included in the final version to keep young and old entertained.

The above mentioned games all have the potential to fill in as great introductions to Kinect, but three other titles which were also on show, Dance Central, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, and EA Sports Active 2 are probably the best examples of Kinect-integration done right.

All three games utilise Kinect in a more natural way and make use of Kinect's full body motion tracking, while at the same time minimising the need for the sought after 1:1 interaction due to the game's focus or setup. For example, Dance Central sees players acting out dance moves by following on-screen indicators and matching their moves to an on-screen dancer, and while the different difficulties are set to offer up more advanced and faster paced dancing, the lack of on-screen representation of your actions (such as a mirror affect seen in other Kinect games), means any latency that may be present isn't noticeable. The end result is impressive, and should make for a challenging, yet entertaining experience.

The last two games, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved and EA Sports Active 2, again are games that are set to thrive on Kinect thanks to its total body motion tracking. Packing in everything from yoga to martial arts, these fitness titles offer up a unique experience that will see Kinect as the popular choice for those looking to work up a sweat.

Overall, Kinect surprised me. The hardware is down right impressive, and while it remains to be seen whether the launch titles will be an early hit, the final impression from Rage is that Microsoft's motion controller is brimming with potential. It's still very much targeted at casual gamers, and the pricing point is going to hamper the initial uptake, but it's hard to ignore Microsoft's efforts to create a new way for gamers to interact with the virtual world.

Kinect will be available world wide for Xbox 360 gamers from November.